Neighbourly: Britain's Charities And Community Projects Reach Out To Business

Britain’s businesses are keen to do more to support charitable and community projects – particularly in their local areas, where building customer goodwill and boosting staff morale represent a chance to add value. At the same time, those responsible for such projects need the funding, given the ongoing public sector austerity and the squeeze on living standards, both of which have piled the pressure on to traditional supporters.

What’s needed, then, is a match-making service – an organisation or platform that can help the businesses that want to give to find the projects in need of cash. Enter Neighbourly, a new social network launched on Thursday to do exactly that.

Neighbourly allows community project managers and charities up and down the country to post details of their work on the platform in order to make a direct appeal for support to businesses with funds to spare. Early backers on Neighbourly include Marks & Spencer, Starbucks, Carphone Warehouse and the accountancy firm BDO.

It’s an initiative that is sorely needed – the evidence suggests companies’ financial support for good causes has actually been falling in recent times. A report published by the Directory of Social Change, for example, reckons corporate support fell by almost a quarter to between £700m and £800m last year. To put that figure into context, it represents just 2 per cent of all funds raised by the voluntary sector – individuals, by contrast, donated 43 per cent.

It would be tempting to let companies off the hook by pointing to the recession as an explanation for their diminishing generosity. But the companies in the Directory of Social Change report saw their profitability rise by an average of more than 50 per cent last year.

Nick Davies, the founder of Neighbourly, hopes the explanation for the falling corporate support is that companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find projects they want to support – where once large businesses gave to charity by making large donations to national organisations, they are now keen to allocate funds through local offices, building connections in the local community with their support. This is hard work.

Neighbourly isn’t only a philanthropic endeavour. The site is free to use for charities and communities raising money and Neighbourly does not take a cut of funds raised. However, it does charge business subscribers to access the site – and provides a range of fees in return for the site.

Davies may well be pushing at an open door, with the UK now required to play catch up on its international rivals. In the US, for example, corporate philanthropy was worth almost $18bn last year alone.

Moreover, it is in companies’ interests to give, assuming they can find the right projects to support, with many businesses having identified corporate and social responsibility programmes as a key component of their campaigns to win back the consumer trust foregone during and after the recessions.

Neighbourly isn’t crowdfunding in the strictest sense of the word, in that each project is looking for one supporter to provide all its funding. However, like crowdfunding sites, Neighbourly does provide a platform where projects and would-be financial supporter can meet to discuss their options. Watch this space.

I've been a financial journalist for more than 20 years: I've written for most of the national newspapers in the UK (plus a host of magazines and web sites) on topics related to business, economics, finance, property, investment, personal finance and entrepreneurship.I've...